The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay: An American Family in Iran

by Majd, Hooman

  We had brought Khash, for there are no Iranian parties anywhere on the planet where children, from infants to teenagers, are unwelcome, whether the hosts and hostesses are prepared to handle a child in their home or not. This home was most definitely not the place for an infant, from the party setting outdoors by a deep pool, to the baby’s sleeping quarters hastily arranged on the living room couch, within earshot of the patio. Smoke from the barbecue set up to grill kebabs, a staple of almost every party regardless of what other main courses would be served, seemed to waft directly into the room where Khash slept, perhaps inconsequential to Tehran residents who breathe smoke every day—the equivalent of half a pack of cigarettes, according to the Tehran health department a few years ago—but alarming to Karri, unaccustomed as she was to Iranians’ indifference to all forms of pollution, especially the kind they’re responsible for creating.

  Karri, to her discomfort, had to obsessively check on Khash—he fell asleep soon after we arrived—whose bed she rearranged on the floor using the cushions from the sofa. But she was rather elated to discover that our hostess, a single woman in her fifties, was serving genuine French wine. Wine is not a popular item for bootleggers or their customers, less popular than even beer, since like beer, it is cumbersome and expensive to transport relative to its alcohol content. Besides, not many Iranians have a taste for fine wine, since it has not traditionally been an accompaniment to Persian cuisine, and unlike many Americans and Brits but like the French, they do not consider it an aperitif. It was certainly not going to be on my list of items to order from a dealer.

  But this glass of wine was Karri’s first taste since flying to Tehran, and she was more than happy to have it. The other enthusiastic wine drinker, aside from the hostess, was a heavily made-up single lady in her forties, dressed in a short dress that didn’t become her figure. She had been invited, we discovered, in an attempt at matchmaking with a single friend of mine who had previously shown no interest in her whatsoever. That is not considered an impediment to Iranian would-be matchmakers, a profession almost all Iranians—from the deeply religious to the Westernized secularists—consider their second, if not first, in a culture where meeting potential partners is limited to gatherings at parties and introductions made by family.

  This woman, taken with my friend and unconcerned with his obvious indifference, was a staunch monarchist, not unusual among a certain segment of older Tehran society that clings to memories of the lavish parties they or their parents threw, exactly like the one she was attending this night. She launched into a tirade against the ruling mullahs, people she thought were beneath contempt and certainly not worthy heirs to the empire of the shahs. When one guest reminded her that I was a relative of Khatami’s, she stared at me and asked, in a friendly enough tone, “Why do they hate the shah so much?”

  I replied that I didn’t think Khatami or some of the other more enlightened clerics particularly hated anyone, much less someone who had been dead for decades, but I conceded that the Islamic regime was not fond of monarchy, and it (or for that matter any viable successor regime) was unlikely to change its position on that anytime soon. Some Iranians’ apparent obsession with the glory of monarchy, rather than the glory of Iran and its culture, I added, is shared neither by the ayatollahs nor by the population at large, and I doubted that too many mullahs thought about the shah, or shahs, very much at all.

  This woman was a Francophile, spoke fluent French, and visited France every year, but she was either unaware or unconcerned with what the French had done to their monarchs and aristocracy following their revolution, a far bloodier affair than Iran’s. Why, I wondered, given her hatred of Iran as it was, which she willingly expressed, did she not just leave?

  “I’m going to,” she declared emphatically. “This country is useless for people like me, and I’m moving away permanently, this year or next.” Farda, again.

  Another friend, standing behind me, leaned down and whispered in my ear, “She’s been saying that for twenty years.”

  A few days later we were invited to another party, also at a North Tehran estate, whose grounds were impressive enough but about half the acreage of our last party. This house, once the country home of a friend’s father, was situated farther north, surrounded by a dense neighborhood of high-rise apartment buildings: hundreds of apartments enjoyed a direct view of the large swimming pool in the center of the estate’s garden, rendering it useless. But the visibility of the entire estate to strangers’ apartment windows didn’t diminish the enthusiasm of the host and hostess, or their guests, for alcohol-fueled parties—they were regular events on the Tehran social calendar, attended by a who’s who of secular Tehran.

  Again, and at the insistence of our hosts, we brought Khash, who they assured us would have a nice place to sleep, safe and sound, once he got tired. That place, we discovered, was their own bed, in their bedroom, down the hall from the huge living room. Although Tehran parties don’t get going until way past his bedtime, we finally were able to put him to sleep just as the volume on the stereo was turned up to eleven, and the music changed from a mix of Euro lounge to full-on maximum-beats-per-minute electronic dance. Guests danced feverishly on the marble floor of the living room, making listening to the baby monitor we carried with us next to impossible. Between getting refills from the uniformed bartender outside (in full view of the neighbors, incidentally), either Karri or I would walk back to the bedroom every five minutes or so to make sure that Khash had not awakened or fallen off the bed and decided to go for a crawl to get away from the infernal noise, or bad music, as the case might be. But he slept right through it, in fact better than he slept normally, not even stirring the entire evening until we picked him up to go home. Our hostess was pleased that she had been right all along to insist that a dance party at her house was a perfectly appropriate place to bring a baby, but I was a little concerned that if we made this a regular affair, he might grow up to subconsciously favor dance music, and not the good kind.

  Although the party was designed to be less formal and more about letting loose on the weekend, the guests still talked plenty of politics, and not just because diplomats were present, including Jane Marriott, the British chargé d’affaires (who, like Karri, is gluten-intolerant and so was thrilled to hear from her that one could buy gluten-free baked goods at a certain midtown branch of a Tehran bakery, as long as one ordered them in advance). One of the first people to approach me, drink in hand, was a woman, probably in her late thirties, who said she lived in London mostly and recognized me from some TV appearance or other and had read my books. “You know,” she said, “I voted for Ahmadinejad, but I’m ashamed to say it now.”

  Why had she voted for him? I asked.

  “Because he was the only one standing up for Iran, telling the West where to get off, and not letting them exploit Iran.”

  But then why be ashamed now? That aspect of Ahmadinejad hadn’t changed, had it, even if the election was fraudulent?

  “No,” she said, “but after what’s happened …”

  I understood what she was trying to say. I had come across Iranians, both inside Iran and abroad, who were completely Westernized, secular, and liberal, and who yet had voted for the conservative and deeply religious Ahmadinejad, in some cases twice. One would imagine that these Iranians would be in favor of reform (if not revolution), of a type that would allow them to enjoy the same lifestyle in Iran that they did in Europe or America. But they were deeply nationalistic, and Ahmadinejad had always, to the dismay of the ruling clerics, emphasized nationalism, even over faith. Of course, wait—Westernized Iranians did already enjoy the same lifestyle in Tehran that they enjoyed in their foreign abodes, as evidenced by this very party, which, judging by the parade of exotic cars, the designer clothes, and the well-stocked bar, could have been held in Beverly Hills or the south of France were it not for the ladies’ manteaus and shawls hanging conspicuously on the rolling rack by the front door.

  Not all Iranians who supp
orted Ahmadinejad through two elections were as apologetic as this lady, but some, in the presence of either reformists or antiregime Iranians, were just a little embarrassed by the security state that Iran had more visibly become under their favored politician—with far more political prisoners than during the previous administration. (A fair argument could be made that this wasn’t his sole fault.) Still, the security state didn’t seem to care very much about the goings-on at this party, even as the guest list included expat foreigners (the handful that live in Tehran) and senior diplomats from “enemy” countries, such as Great Britain. I wondered if it would harass some of these people on their drives home, say, if the women were mal-veiled. Jane Marriott, who left at the same time as we did, drove herself off in a Japanese SUV with diplomatic plates—and with no tail, as far as I could tell.

  On another occasion at the same house, the diplomatic guests included representatives from Italy, France, and Germany, as well as the Australian ambassador, a young, beer-swilling, leather-jacket-and-jeans-wearing man, well befitting his country’s laid-back reputation, and the Swiss ambassador, Livia Leu Agosti, who also represents U.S. interests in Iran in the absence of an American diplomatic outpost. “I’m keeping an eye out,” she said to me in all seriousness, “in case something happens to you.”

  I expressed surprise that she might be able to do anything for me at all, given that I was in Iran on an Iranian passport and that Iran doesn’t recognize dual citizenship.

  “Yes,” she said, “but they [the government] still care when I make a fuss.” Her presence was apt, I suppose, given that probably half the guests were, like us, dual U.S. citizens, but it seems odd that foreign diplomats so easily mingle with Iranians at these kinds of parties and apparently nowhere else. Iranians living in Iran have to be extremely wary of associating with foreigners, especially diplomats, who are often assumed to be spies. Iranians who are completely uninvolved in politics, especially artists, will accept invitations to embassy parties, but no Iranian official, present or former, and no one with any political ambition, would be caught dead speaking to a Western diplomat, least of all while the West was pressuring Iran with sanctions and military threats over its nuclear program. Various acts of sabotage and assassination attempts were also going on in 2011, and the majority of Iranians blamed them entirely on the CIA, the Mossad, Britain’s MI6, or all three—intelligence agencies with a presumed presence in foreign embassies allied to the United States.

  Certainly none of the Iranians at the funeral service I attended one afternoon in downtown Tehran, on a stiflingly hot July day, would be invited to, let alone attend, an embassy party or one where foreign ambassadors were present. It was the funeral for Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Sadoughi, the cleric from Yazd who was the province’s Friday prayer leader and a personal representative of the Supreme Leader. He was the only reform cleric left—after six years of purges—as the vali-e-faqih’s representative outside Tehran. As such, his funeral attracted high representatives of the regime, such as the moderate foreign minister, who showed up in a somewhat pedestrian Mazda, texting away in the front passenger seat; arch-conservative politicians; other clerics, moderate and conservative; and senior reform figures, such as the deceased’s brother-in-law Mohammad Khatami and his entire family.

  Outside the mosque, which was near a busy square, security was tight. A few dozen Basij lounged by their motorcycles parked by the entrance, apparently waiting to heap derision on the former president when he arrived: they and some in the regime considered him a seditionist, even the leader of a path away from true Islamic governance. Khatami’s driver and entourage were well aware of this possibility, since it was the norm now wherever he ventured and cameras were present, so they escorted him into and out of the mosque through a back entrance on another street, denying the Basij the satisfaction and him the embarrassment of a rude confrontation.

  Later that day I arrived at a party (Karri and Khash were waiting for me), dying for the stiff drink I knew I would find there. Once again I was aware of the incongruity of the state being far more concerned with monitoring, even harassing, its own than with monitoring parties where un-Islamic behavior was rampant. They would be concerned, naturally, if a regime figure attended such a party, and they keep watch on politicians and ministry officials who attend embassy parties, even the formal “national day” parties at embassies where a few invited Foreign Ministry officials do show up as a nod to protocol but leave before any alcohol is served. The almost complete separation of Iranian politics from Westerners on all but the most formal of occasions, in contrast to the citizenry, which relished contact with the outside world, to me spoke to how difficult it would be for Iran and the West to break down the barriers of mistrust that were now in their fourth decade of existence. If you couldn’t party together, how on earth could you ever understand each other? The segmented party culture reminded me, also, of the class structure that still existed in Iran, and the growing gap between haves and have-nots—if Iranians didn’t mingle with or speak to one another, which they most emphatically did not, how was Iran ever going to realize any of its democratic ambitions?

  The expat community in Tehran is minuscule, certainly compared to that in other countries, even repressive China, and some of the neighboring Arab states. Karri, although an Iranian citizen now and someone who had surprisingly quickly adjusted to life in Tehran, was still always going to be an expat no matter how long we lived there, and I knew she would enjoy meeting, and sometimes commiserating with, others like herself. In the absence of clubs and the like for foreigners, which exist in other countries, one cannot just set out to meet other foreign residents in Tehran. So some of these parties we were invited to were a godsend, as far as I was concerned, even if they showed her a side of Iran restricted to the very privileged.

  Before we left New York for Tehran, the Polish deputy ambassador in Iran, Piotr Kozlowski, had contacted me by e-mail and had invited us to dinner as soon as we settled in. I accepted eagerly. Our neighborhood in Brooklyn is overwhelmingly Polish—signs on the shops are in Polish—so we actually had more in common with the Poles than would seem apparent, and since the diplomat had a son almost the exact age as Khash, I was optimistic that we might become good friends, and that Karri might have someone other than my Iranian friends to talk to. Once we were in Tehran, I happened to tell a friend of mine, a former senior official of the regime, that I was seeing the Polish deputy ambassador. His first reaction was that Kozlowski was indubitably from the Polish intelligence services and that I should be careful. That didn’t dissuade me; their son Aleks, born in Tehran, got on famously with Khash. When Piotr asked me at the end of our dinner if I would be willing to meet the ambassador at the official residence one evening, I happily said yes, despite knowing that it might be another mark against me. An invitation followed shortly thereafter, and again we took Khash with us, for the ambassador, Juliusz Gojlo, insisted that his own young children would enjoy meeting him.

  The Polish embassy in Tehran sits on a large plot of land in the northern reaches of the center of town; not quite North Tehran, it was once a neighborhood of fancy shops and large private homes. Today it is dotted with apartments and commercial buildings, although there are still quite a few fancy stores, where Iranians shop for imported party clothes, and restaurants, where younger Westernized Iranians still party, on the main boulevard, whose name was changed from Jordan to Africa (or Afriqa, depending on the sign) after the revolution. This was not because Jordan Street was once named for the country that later sided with Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran, but because the street was named for the American educator Dr. Samuel Jordan, who founded the American College of Tehran, in 1898, later to become Alborz College (high school), the Eton or St. Paul’s of Iran, where my father was educated briefly before being expelled for punching the headmaster in the face (for his having boxed my uncle ’round the ears for some infraction or other). Jordan may have been an unpopular memory for the revolutionaries, reminding the
m perhaps of American benevolence rather than imperialism and hegemony, but I have yet to come across an Iranian living in Iran, from the older generations who remember the avenue in its heyday to the younger who have no idea who Dr. Jordan was, who call it Africa and not Jordan. Africa, it seems, sadly, can’t get any respect, not even from the citizens of an anti-colonialist, antiimperialist, and truly revolutionary country.

  The Polish government bought the embassy property in 1979, just as the revolution was taking hold, and it houses both the chancery and the ambassador’s residence. A striking midcentury modern structure, with beautiful parklike grounds and a swimming pool, it had been owned, apparently, by an Iranian who fled during the Islamic Revolution. To this day the regime refuses to recognize Polish ownership of the land, believing that the former Iranian owner had obtained it through corruption and venality. But as a sign of the government’s relative friendliness with Poland—and Iranian-Polish relations have a long and congenial history—it has done nothing legally to reclaim the property and has never made the question of ownership a public issue. (By contrast, it is mired in a dispute with Great Britain over a larger property, a big park really, that the British embassy owns on Shariati Avenue, in the north of the city.) During the shah’s time, the house and its grounds were undoubtedly the scene of some fancy parties, certainly wilder if not fancier than the diplomatic dinners that embassies tend to give, but we were happy to have the opportunity to attend a few, and if the political atmosphere had been less oppressive in 2011, other Iranians would have been, too.